The surreal museum an intervention for the Cincinnati Art Museum /

by Lange, Andreas.

Abstract (Summary)

The comprehensive public art museum may be considered a surreal space. A
reinterpretation of surrealism as an aesthetic methodology based in the cultivation of the
unheimlich can help inform and direct an approach to museum planning and design so that
modernization highlights and emphasizes the multiplicitous nature of the museum. As a staged
environment that surpasses direct functionality and rationality, the surreal museum is a scripted
space for the performance of cultural identity. The amalgamative development of museum
buildings, the embedded typological forms, the strange relationship between displaced objects
and display space, and the anxious overlaps in program make the comprehensive art museum a
very complex and incredibly rich architectural space. The Cincinnati Art Museum is an exquisite
corpse of a building illustrating all the qualities of the surreal museum. A strategic architectural
intervention into the Cincinnati Art Museum can expose and emphasize this surreality.
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